About the Project
The Vanderbilt University Museum of Art (VUMA) is a globally minded laboratory where the spirit of curiosity meets visual expression to engage with the most critical human issues, build empathy, and inspire wonder across Vanderbilt University and throughout middle Tennessee. VUMA stewards 12,000 works of art for engaged looking through exhibitions, class visits, and independent research. In this fellowship, students created new poems and musical compositions in response to selections from the VUMA collections. Students in the fellowship chose, analyzed and created new poems or musical compositions inspired by close reading of artworks. Fellows honed their research skills by researching selected art works, creating ekphrastic poetry (musical compositions welcome too), and learning research skills using primary sources. As part of a weekly peer editing process, fellows also built communication and interpretation skills as they refined their works.
Mentors
Mary Anne Caton; Holling Smith-Borne
Fellows
Scotty Mihm; William Yuk; Aaliya Ramakrishnan; Wistel Zamor
Project
Fellows performed their works live at the 2025 Porch Fest, an annual Peabody College-VUMA Festival of the arts, as well as as created a zine for the audience about their process.